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Sunday, June 27, 2010

An Angry Rant About The England Football Team


You know how I'm usually the person who calls for restraint and to give managers time? The one who says that managers get to much blame for poor performances? Not this time. Fabio needs to go - ridiculous starting elevens (Heskey up-front next to Rooney... twice. Upson when Carragher was available, Ledley King who clearly wasn't going to last ninety minutes), ridiculous substitutions (WHY was Gareth Barry, a defensive midfielder, still on the pitch when we were two goals down? And then Heskey... for DEFOE? And why the hell was Milner taken off?); ridiculous over-loyalty to players (Rooney and Lampard played every minute of every game, and were pathetic); ridiculous formations (remember Rooney in left midfield in the the USA game?); and to top it all off, ridiculously poor performances from supposedly elite players in the biggest competition they will ever play in.

 I don't care how much it costs, we need to start over - let's get a manager with proven international credentials (Guus Hiddink?) and tell him to start with a blank slate - no-one is an automatic selection any more. We should pick our best player (probably Rooney, although you'd never know it from this tournament) and build the whole team around him - players are only selected based on their ability to help Rooney score goals. Either that, or go with my previous idea of using the team that wins the Championship that year. 

OK, Rant over. No, wait, no it isn't! Have you heard all the England players? They're blaming the no-goal, and saying that the scoreline doesn't reflect the tempo of the game. Why are they being allowed to get away with this? The team played crap, and they LOST BY THREE GOALS, not one! Fabio should be doing a Marcello Lippi and apologising. The scary thing is, Germany weren't even that good - we gifted them at least three of their goals. Argentina could probably have scored seven or eight. It's time to start again. We may not be the best footballing nation on Earth, but we're better than THAT.

4 comments:

Andrew said...

I feel i should start by defending the England team. Sadly i can't and neither, it appears, can they. The performance, with the possible exception of a 10 min period at the end of the first half and maybe the first 5 mins of the 2nd, was woeful. The attacking was pedestrian. A fact proven by how much time the German central defenders seemed to have despite possessing "no pace whatsoever". The kcitsanotihs (i feel to call it defence would be offensive to anyone who plys their trade in such an art and thus have renamed it) would have been genuinely comical and worthy of a scene in charlie chaplin had it not been in such a serious situation. Upson looked out of his depth, especially in terms of pace which was not helped by Terry's seeming lack of interest in helping him out when things did get messy (insert your own joke here about what the Argentinian attack would have done to our defence had we survived).

The 11 that we started with was, probably, the right call to make. England's confidence was fragile at best and giving the same 11 that had won previously a vote of confidence was better than changing it slightly to bring in players who were, maybe, marginally better at best. Binging in Carragher for Upson was pointless as he'd not done much to show he was that much better and Upson and Terry had performed well in the previous game albeit against limited opposition. Ledley King has a bit more pace than the other options and, were he able to last the 90, would have been the only plausible change.

Once it became fairly obvious that we were being outnumbered/passed/classed in midfield then a difficult decision should have been made, probably about defoe, to bring on another midfielder to try and give us something closer to parity in that area.

In terms of subs, yes Heskey was a little inane (well ok very inane)but the options were limited to say the least. Taking Milner off was a bit strange i agree, but gerrard (as captain and playing reasonably well) was never going to go off, lampard had hit the bar, almost scored and actually scored (whatever the officils say) so clearly he was providing as much of a goal threat as anyone and Barry was (in theory) trying to shield our kcitsanotihs thus allowing the aforementioned to get forward a bit more. While not his best performance in this role i'd hate to have seen our kcitsanotihs without him. Rooney is left on because, even when he's not on form as currently, there's always a chance he could perform that litle bit of magic to create the opening. Only Joe Cole really comes anywhere near Rooney in terms of this ability and, since Joe was surplus to requirements most of the time, it means Rooney has to stay unless we want to be even more 2 dimensional.

I'd keep Fabio till the Euros. I reckon he was surprised by teh demands of an international tournaments compared to club competition and i think he'll learn from it. You don't get to where he's been without learning from your mistakes. Also over the coming few years players like Terry, Lampard and Gerrard will disappear from the International scene making way for new blood. I think it's quite important to have someone like Capello in place to start them off on the right foot, create the team atmosphere and spirit as he's done at so many other places. By the time he was appointed to England too many players were settled into a routine of individuality so it was too late, but people like Milner and Johnson who havent been around the squad quite as long can be built into a real team. One that should, as you say, be designed around getting the best out of one or two star players like Rooney. Not exclusively so though. Otherwise what happens when Rooney goes off form? AS with the last few weeks you're left with no plan b and a bench full of Heskeys.

With the right work though we're clearly a shoe in for victory in 2014.......

Andrew said...

Oh, I almost forgot. I think blaming the defeat on teh 'goal that clearly was' is inane. We could ahve scored another 3 and the germans would probably just have put more pressure on our kcitsanotihs which would have crumbled and thus conceded more. HOWEVER, if an entire nation moaning about it and blaming it is what it takes to get FIFA to change their neolithic mindset then so be it.

Nik Myers said...

He should have put Theo Walcott in goal.

Andrew said...

If you mean instead of Green in the first game you may get more support than you'd think.....